The Lake Of Fire
by Gojirob
Summary: Six months after the events of 'The Cage', Captain Pike is seeing horrific visions of an afterlife he does not believe in--and that will not grant him peace.


The Lake Of Fire

by Rob Morris

He jumped from rock to burning rock, the absurdity of it all singeing him as badly as the smoking brimstone. Were this really the place it pretended to be, he knew would not be jumping about, or be permitted to do so.

"You referred to this as a fable from my race's childhood. By and large, I'm not frightened of fables."

Above him, hidden in shadow but with an unmistakable, almost bifurcated, buzzing voice was the Talosian Keeper.

"Fables have resonance for a reason. The most terrible Klingon fable has their Dread Kahless returning in disguise and leaving in disgust as he finds no fit warriors to drink with. The most terrible Vulcan one has children found wandering in the desert, and then taken in and given food, till it is found that these children are from the clans of Those Who Left, rather than embrace Surak. Do you think species merely pull frightening images from the ether? Your fables are your own flesh and blood. So it is for the afterlife called Hell, Christopher Pike."

Captain Pike's patience was already gone.

"I am a rational man! I believe in neither Heaven nor Hell!"

The Keeper waved his frail hand. The rocks and the ground vanished from beneath Pike.

"Yet they believe in you. In the absence of your belief, which then will choose to embrace you?"

The fetid water below turned to fire as Pike fell. To his own shock, he began to cry out.

"Don't let me fall! Not down there! I don't want to see what's down there. Burn me or devour me, but don't make me see what's in that..."

---

USS ENTERPRISE, LATE 2255

Pike awoke in Sickbay, surrounded by Number One, Doctor Boyce, and Lieutenant Spock. He failed to stop saying the final word from his nightmare.

"Lake."

The young Vulcan was the first to speak.

"Since the Captain has regained consciousness, I will ask to withdraw. Commander?"

Number One nodded in assent.

"Permission granted, Lieutenant. Your discretion in this matter is to be commended, and its persistence will not go unappreciated."

After a glance at Pike just quick enough to reveal more than business-like concern, Spock left to resume his duties. If Christopher Pike had to guess at the Vulcan, he had less work ciphering out the concerns of his First Officer.

"I'll be fine, Number One."

"With all respect, Captain, I will leave such judgments to be rendered by Doctor Boyce. My own shift, extended due to your incapacity, begins soon, and I must prepare for it. Sir."

The tough crispness was there in her, as always. But along with it came something new, and quite unexpected. Number One was angry at her commanding officer for allowing himself to become ill. It was very well hidden, and yet it was there, no mistake.

"Dismissed, Commander."

When she had left as well, and Boyce had cleared the area of other medical personnel, Pike allowed his composure to slide.

"Talk to me, Philip. How did I get here?"

Boyce also showed annoyance.

"You broke your word to me, Chris. The nightmares never stopped, and they are obviously getting worse. Captain Pike, tell me. Do you somehow labor under the notion that starship commanders are exempt from the need to keep their heart rates and blood pressure within the vibrational rate of the universe they occupy?"

"Watch it, Doctor."

"No, Chris. *You* had better damned well watch it. If Spock had brought you in as much as ten minutes later, your systems would have been in such a state as to demand my invocation of the CMO's final prerogative. You know the one that, once you enact it, things are never the same? That's how close you were, Captain. For good measure, had he been thirty minutes later, I would have been toasting Number One on her new command."

Pike didn't bother to dispute the prognosis. The cold, clammy sweat that covered his body gave best evidence of its correctness.

"Spock brought me here? But I was in my quarters."

"Yeah. Quarters that you had covered by audio dampeners set at grand max. But while those things cover noises, they don't create zones of perfect quiet. Spock heard the feedback, bless those desert-spawned ears of his, then paused and heard past the noise they were meant to cover."

"My door was locked."

"He pushed past it, and literally scooped you up. You were on the floor."

Pike winced, and not merely because of his physical condition.

"Then the entire crew knows."

Boyce shook his head.

"Spock told anyone who saw him that you had slipped and struck your head on your dresser. Which you may have, for all I know."

"Phil–are you telling me that a Vulcan violated his commanding officer's privacy, broke a lock, and lied, almost all in the same breath?"

"Chris, Spock explained it away with logic. There was no reason, at least yet and to his mind, for the crew to know that its leader was incapacitated, and in fact every reason to keep this from them until it should become necessary. He called what he did a choice, based on the needs of the many, as it related to the few, and the one. But mind you, I didn't buy a word of it."

"I don't follow you."

"Every captain sees it happen. One crewmember holds them in a higher regard than anyone else. In some cases, it's almost a mythic regard. No matter where that crewman ends up, even if they later walk with kings, that captain's impact on their life and career never fades. I thought you'd picked up on it, Chris. Spock is that way about you."

Pike waved a dismissive hand.

"Hogwash. Vulcans are not sentimental idiots, like too many of us poor Terrans."

"Chris, do you honestly believe that an absence of visible sentiment also means its non-existence? Would it help you accept it, if I told you that Bob April also had such a crewman?"

"April never seemed the type. His whole crew held him in exactly the kind of regard you're talking about."

Boyce came to realize not one but two errors on his part.

"Well, perhaps that's why his fortunes went in reverse on that one sad young man. Name of Aaron Cartwright. But congratulations are in order, Captain Pike. You very nearly dragged me off topic. So now, with all trivia set aside—"

Doctor Boyce stepped within three inches of his superior's face, and it seemed a position he would not yield without armed escort.

"Tell me what is in those nightmares you've been having!"

"Is that a demand from the Chief Medical Officer, Doctor?!"

"No! It's a demand made by a friend, who wants to help his friend but can't, till he knows what's afflicting him. Chris, if you don't make me aware of what you're fighting, you render me unable to help you, and for a physician, there is no greater wrong."

To Boyce's surprise, the normally unyielding face of Christopher Pike suddenly showed real fear.

"Phil, in my dreams? I go to Hell. Hell as real as you, me, Number One or the Enterprise. All the dreams of Dante, Milton, King, Gaiman and Sirrom can't match the Hell I saw. The Keeper is there, but he's not interested in breeding me. Only taunts. I am scared out of my mind in these nightmares, and then I wake up disgusted that a 23rd Century man of my intellect and experience is tortured by the stuff of revival tents and medieval purges."

Boyce had a quick analysis.

"Flashback. Much like certain perception-altering narcotics 'repeat' on the user, sometimes for decades, the forced perception shifts the Talosians made you endure are intruding upon your reality in the here and now. I'm sorry, Captain. I feel like I should have anticipated something like this."

Pike showed that he did not fully accept this explanation.

"But why Hell? Why not Vina as an Orion woman, or gentle picnics on Earth? Those things I feel a part of. I'm neither religious nor anti-religious. I have no use for chants made to an invisible sky-father, but I never proselytize the way some atheists do. The premise and imagery of Hell has never meant anything to me."

Boyce had Pike's favorite drinking glass at the ready, albeit with simple ice water instead of something harder. To the captain, it was very, very welcome.

"Chris? Obviously, something has changed."

Refilling his captain's already-empty glass and this time adding a bit of lemon for taste, Philip Boyce tried to pin that something down.

"What was your religious upbringing?"

"There wasn't any. Doctor, I was not rebelling against strict parents, nor am I the product of dinner-table mockery of the beliefs of others. It wasn't avoided, and it wasn't embraced. In the Pike household, religion simply...wasn't. About that, I have no regrets."

"No regrets?"

"Not a one."

Boyce quickly upset the captain's certainty.

"What about questions?"

Pike made an uncharacteristic effort at feigning ignorance.

"Questions like what?"

Boyce was having none of this.

"Questions, sir, like just what happens after Christopher Pike draws his last breath?"

If the doctor had made an error in his method of approach, it was in giving his clever, sharp commanding officer an adversary, however mild, to combat.

"That's simple, Doctor. He ceases to exist. He doesn't wander the decks of the Enterprise, or seek spectral revenge, if he was murdered. When it all goes away, so do I. So do you, and so does everything that has ever lived."

A sort of wistful confidence had come back over Pike, as though a recalcitrant planetary leader were on the verge of learning his lesson. Boyce found this to be small evidence of recovery, and more likely indicative of the building of a facade.

"If that's the case, then tell me why, of all the images the Keeper assaulted you with, is Hell remaining in your dreams?"

Pike's response was fast in coming, though it showed no quickness of wit.

"There's no denying that it's a potent, primal image. As a species, we only left all that unthinking nonsense behind relative minutes ago. Is it a stirring image? Of course. The rulers of ancient Earth needed that sort of thing to keep people under their thumb. Heaven and Hell were trotted out as carrot and stick, to keep the state's territories expanding. Do the will of the former, or go to the latter. Zero-One. Just like primitive computers, and just as useful for controlling the populace and keeping track of whoever might dare to say that the sovereign was a corrupt animal, using the shadow of something that wasn't there to justify every last sin they supposedly hated."

"And you are so sure that there was and is nothing there and that there never has been?"

"In fact, Doctor Boyce, I can prove it."

This seemingly grandiose claim struck Boyce silent, so Pike went on.

"Did Christ ever ask that bloody Crusades be made in his name? Did Mohammed ever direct young people to expend their lives for no other purpose than to create fear? When Surak said that his people should seek the path of control, did he really mean that they should live in mortal fear of their emotions? I once interrogated a Klingon defector who claimed that Kahless The Unforgettable would regard wars merely for territorial expansion as a sign of the fall of Creation itself. Yet all these leaders to some extent have been said to have been touched by the divine, or been divine themselves."

Boyce shook his head just enough to show that he didn't follow this.

"Well, don't you see? Look at all the misery caused by misguided followers of these men. A standard argument, some might say. But therein lies my proof. If these men truly had some aspect of the divine in them, they would have foreseen the pain their words would bring when twisted. That they did not means that they were in fact, merely men, and that the *spark* some claim to have touched them most pointedly does not exist. Moreover, until this whole train of thought about an overseeing God is shut down, dupes and idiots will continue feeding at that trough, waiting for the next disaster to invoke it once again, once more seizing on fear to reignite a fire that should have died millennia ago."

"So it's as simple as all that?"

"It really should be. A divider, a narcotic, and a way that tyrants keep power. The very embodiment of anti-intellectualism. Book-thumping bigots running things and ruining them as far back as one cares to look, and not only on Earth. I truly pity the poor fool who still feels the need to talk to the Unseen Hand. Because they may as well be talking to their own, or doing something else with their hand, as far as I'm concerned!"

Boyce gave his captain the very coldest glare their friendship would ever see.

"For the record, I am one such poor fool. I talk to the Unseen Hand at least twice a day and constantly if we have wounded in here. I don't do it out of fear. I don't know why I do it. It's so easy to diminish and belittle people's beliefs, Chris. It's harder to figure out the big questions, and despite my own not-absent intellect, those questions do come. You do realize that some of the greatest thinkers in Human history are among those poor fools you deride?"

Pike found himself in a very bad position.

"Phil, I never meant to offend you."

Boyce helped his friend up, and towards the Sickbay door.

"It's probably best we don't talk now, sir. But I will say two things: For someone who doesn't proselytize their beliefs, you surely got a rise out of me. And for someone who supposedly has no questions about what comes after this life, you surely have some interesting dreams."

"Phil, please. How will I get through this, If I can't speak to you about it?"

"Chris, you have a little under four hundred people to speak to on this ship. Talk with them. You may find an answer there."

Pike seemed to find no comfort in the prospect of this quest.

"Sartre said that Hell is other people."

Boyce smiled a bit as the door shut.

"Yet the worst punishment a prisoner can endure is to be put in solitary confinement."

The captain made his way back to his quarters, the mere idea of asking even those in his senior staff such questions shaking him almost as much as the imagery of Hell.

"The solitary life is sorely underrated, Doctor."

----

In the dreams of the Keeper and Hell, Pike's very best verbal arguments and tactics, and these were some of the best anywhere in the galaxy, were routinely brushed aside before he fell into the lake of fire. Tonight, things would prove no different.

"You can't send me into that pit. I reject the notion that this is at all possible, even in a world of illusion."

The Keeper never showed the slightest sign that he was impressed with this show of defiance.

"You will explain. And then you will fall. Again."

"Fine, then. You cannot send me into this pit, because there is no Heaven, no Hell, and No God! From the first massively bosomed Earth-Mother pottery in humankind's dawn to the Hammer Of Thor through to the wasteful millennial beliefs of a few hundred years ago, it is one and all a sham!"

"Hmmm. Describe your objection to the existence of God."

Pike literally felt the ground solidify beneath him, and the flames begin to go away.

"Where do I start? No–I have it. Who is this God? He sits above it all, issuing orders for all of creation from his perch that, by definition, very few are granted access to. He is purposely apart from those that worship him, all the while deciding who lives and who dies, talking the talk of caring for those in his charge, but in truth, being cold and aloof. His presence is said to be everywhere at once, and yet, where is he?"

The Keeper nodded.

"A ruler who sits above in a place restricted to the chosen few, apart from those he has charge over and professes to care for, always at a distance from them. I can show you the face of such a one. Would you know him better?"

"Go ahead. Show me what just isn't there. I'm betting it's beyond your power, even in this place, and even in a dream."

The Keeper moved his head as though to laugh, and said two literally damning words.

"You lose."

Once more, the ground fell away, and the lake lay below Pike. Yet for a moment, it did not catch fire, and he was suspended above it. The lake was crystal clear, and its waters became both reflective and magnifying. Pike's own stunned face was gigantic before him.

"Behold, the false God, who stands apart from his charges, so concerned about dignity and appearance he cannot even walk among them for extended periods. There is a place for false gods, Christopher Pike. For those who try to supplant the one, true God and fail, as they must always fail. Enter it now. Enter it forever."

As always, the lake caught fire, and Pike plunged into it, screaming. Beneath the waters, he glimpsed something. Something that made his entire being recoil.

------

Captain Pike awoke, and ran to the refresher to be sick. What he had so briefly glimpsed beneath the lake had a name, and this name meant both Accuser and Adversary. He said it as his insides finally settled enough to stand up.

"Satan."

The man in the mirror had no cloven feet or horns. Yet Christopher Pike spoke to him as though to an enemy.

"I better not *ever* hear you speak to Phil Boyce that way again. Arrogant idiot!"

He would wager, and in this case he would not lose, that Boyce would forgive him fairly rapidly. Doctors were odd, tending to forgive slights more readily than injuries their captains forced them to repair and then repair again. Forgiving himself was harder. Pike had known that he was speaking to a religious man, albeit one quiet about the subject. So why, he wondered, did he unleash that invective, the likes of which had little purpose but to offend?

"Did I want him to challenge me?"

Maybe, reasoned Pike, beliefs unexamined were simply not beliefs worth having, no matter what those beliefs said. Perhaps, just as the very religious found their faith challenged, so might those who had kept religion at a distance.

*The dark night of something I don't even believe in. Yet those dreams are real enough*, he thought. So was his need. Following Boyce's advice would involve some fancy footwork, though. He could not simply go out and about, consulting his crew at random.

---

Yeoman J.M. Colt was as surprised as anyone to see her captain sit down with her in the galley. He looked around to see that they had enough privacy to avoid easily being heard.

"I don't know if I told you this, Ensign, but you held up well when we were held by the Talosians. It was an odd, untoward, and potentially humiliating situation, but you kept your cool. That enabled the rest of us to do our jobs."

Colt seemed very nearly blown away by this compliment.

"Sir? Are we even allowed to discuss this?"

"So long as we veer away from specifics, don't speak overmuch on it, and only with those who already know about it, we're well within the law."

Colt visibly relaxed after hearing this.

"It's good to hear that from you, sir. But I honestly had no worries. Not with you and Number One there. Her skills, combined with your approach to things, made me certain that we wouldn't be kept there so we could–errrr, perform."

Maybe the nightmares had some value after all, thought Pike. If merely addressing this woman in a non-formal fashion helped her to perk up so readily, then perhaps reducing the distance between himself and his crew was called for.

"Thank you, Colt. Captains appreciate a kind word, too."

"Well, it doesn't take a warp engineer to know that I'm not the one He tapped on the shoulder, sir."

Despite himself, Christopher Pike began to feel like retreating again. This feeling would not lessen.

"He, Yeoman?"

Colt caught what she thought was her error.

"I know it's archaic to define the Creator by gender-based terms, sir. But, yes, well–God. There are certain people the Lord Above just sets aside for greater things, and higher purposes. Some even believe that certain folks act as his angels on the Earth-plane, often without even realizing it. I may be reaching, but I've seen all that in your respect for all life, your desire that we all reflect that respect, your restrained use of force, and more things than I can name. I don't mean to embarrass you..."

"No. Not-not-at all, Yeoman."

"But on Talos, your presence told me that everything was going to be all right."

Among Pike's eventual successors as captain of the USS Enterprise would be a man who would have returned the compliment to Colt to build her confidence, and a man who would have gently admonished her that he was only a man, with no need or desire for beatific, angelic or divine honors. But Christopher Pike was neither of these men, and he had not the slightest clue about how to respond to what had been said.

"Keep up the good work, Colt. It does not go unnoticed."

"Thank You, Sir!"

As he left, he reminded himself that a captain needed to be seen as more than a man. This was part of his philosophy of governing the ship. But it had never before occurred to him how much more than a man some might see him as. Was it her awe that frightened him, or being so close as to potentially lose his elevated status in the eyes of the crew?

-----

This time, the dream was not of Hell, and yet it was hellish.

"Phil? What Have I Done?"

The captured, crippled Enterprise would not be yielded up to the murderous invaders. So, by its captain's command, the mighty ship fell from the heavens, burning as it went. Boyce answered.

"What you always do, Chris. You used reason and intellect to arrive at the only choice left to us, in a strategy to buy us enough time to survive."

Yet all Pike could see was the proud angel burning, almost calling out to him in agony, dying with the thought that its master and commander cared for it not at all. After all, wasn't it only a vessel?

Pike reached up, as though to save it.

"My Ship."

----

To be fair, when Number One had attempted to help purge him of the Keeper's breaking illusions shortly after Talos Four, she had warned that visions nonsensical–and in some cases even 'atemporal' might result. At least, Pike thought, that dream made more sense than the post-Atomic Horror courtroom. Yet in that, only his life had been threatened. No menace, dream or real, could be allowed to threaten his command without him holding a very strong grudge.

"The devil take me, and the devil take the devil. But real or imagined, no one touches the Enterprise."

He needed someone who knew him too well to ever worship him, and too intelligent to allow such ridiculousness as he found himself wallowing in. He needed the one person all captains relied on, to carry forward on their behalf, to carry out their orders, and to carry on for them should the worst happen.

"Pike to Number One. I'd like to speak with you when time allows."

In fact, two duty shifts came and went before they spoke, owing to the study of a phenomenon that disrupted the ship's warp field. It was only a slight disruption, but such things were their stock-in-trade, after all.

"Number One?"

He entered her quarters, and while they were as clean as always, there was, remarkably, some small evidence of clutter. Opened books were placed everywhere–neatly, to be sure, but they were so much in evidence as not to be ignored.

"I am here, Captain. Please forgive this ungainly mess. But once my research begins, few things short of duty can break my pursuit."

The pursuit of knowledge, he realized. It only made sense that learning even more than she already knew would be her passion.

"What's the research about? Unless your reasons are personal, of course."

Number One would never be described as excitable. Yet she was just a hair off of her usual persona, and this fraction of a fraction did little to help Pike's internal composure.

"It is not at all personal, sir. Earlier today, I took to viewing an ancient video play concerning the classic compilation, 1001 Arabian Nights. This treatment focused on Aladdin and his lamp. It was what some in the day called an animated feature film. It was produced by a video corporation just prior to the era of its final decline. They had taken to making features that required no so-called licensing fees, utilizing characters in the 'public domain'."

"Hence Aladdin."

"Indeed. As in many of the forty-seven major video treatments of this fable, the Djinn of the lamp is a leading character. In this version, however, his character is removed from constant dour warnings about the nature of his charge's wishes. He is instead given to a more bombastic personality, his dialogue rife with references to the popular culture of the late 20th Century. I have taken to researching each and every one of these references. Each one leads me to further references, often to works I might well have overlooked."

"And that's what you're doing now?"

"No. Those I have completed. But in studying the actor who lent his voice to the Djinn's character, I have found that his was a career that started on a serial video, a nostalgic comedy made in the 1970's but set in the 1950's. This yearning for an era not twenty years past, yet distant in the hearts of its target audience, has given me much insight into the era immediately preceding the Eugenics Wars."

Number One then closed all her books, and logged off the computer files she had accessed.

"Forgive me, Captain. My enthusiasm for my recreational research can on occasion get the better of me. How may I be of service?"

While the notion that the staggering amount of research she had just done was to her 'recreational' sank in, Pike gathered his thoughts.

"You tried to help purge me of the illusions foisted on me by the Talosians. But one of them has been persistent."

"By definition, these were potent illusions. May I surmise that these were the source of your recent troubling nightmares?"

"A good guess as always, Number One. What's even more troubling than the fact of the illusion's persistence is which one my mind refuses to let go of. I'm dreaming of Hell, and it's scaring me twice over. Once, because, well–it's Hell. Twice, because, I am a reasonably intelligent man of a rationalist, humanist tradition and such a man should not be wallowing in infantile racial fantasies such as God, the Devil, Heaven and Hell."

For a bare moment, Pike thought he saw something of Phil Boyce's face in his First Officer's. As it turned out, he was not mistaken in this.

"You operate within a fundamental fallacy. You almost seem to suggest that an intelligent being must be deemed unintelligent if they choose to believe in God."

"Not at all. They certainly have the right to believe what they will. But I will say that my estimation of them will undergo some rethinking and recalculation. The sharpness of a being's rationality loses focus when belief systems directly dependent on the wholly irrational are introduced to the mix. Look at Einstein. He denied the validity of quantum physics based on some insipid idea of what his God would never do. A great mind forever held back by his need to turn to a supposed higher power."

Number One again gave an answer that was not at all expected.

"Held back. Or perhaps propelled forward. To read about Einstein is to realize that his personal faith was integral to his achievements. His moral regrets over the applications of his theories and discoveries form part of the basis of scientific moral guidance to this very day."

Pike began to lose patience with any and all debate.

"I don't need to debate religious versus secular moralism, Number One. I need to escape the Hell I find myself in, every time I so much as close my eyes."

She seemed calmer, and even the remote traces of possible annoyance were now gone from her voice. But she was no more agreeable, nor willing to yield.

"You cannot escape it. It achieves instant victory against you with no effort on its part. It has you, Captain. Likely, it will not yield you up. Because to your mind, you cannot possibly be in the place you see in your dreams. Yet your denial is somehow not strong enough to deliver you–so to speak. So you are trapped. You cannot escape from a prison whose existence you deny. Perhaps its nature is not what it seems, and that may be your way out. But until you allow that you are trapped in that place, you cannot break the trap."

"What are you saying? That I have to adopt religion, start believing in God and all that? That I have to wait for this Biblical superhero to swing down and rescue the poor lost lamb from the burning lake of perdition?"

He knew in his heart that she was saying no such thing. But he had been rubbed the wrong way too often in this to be at his best.

"I can't believe I'm having this conversation with you, of all people. To embrace the irrational is to embrace the chaos of some other being's acts of whimsy, and the avarice and greed of those who follow them."

"It's I who can't believe all this of you, Captain. To deny that something that so many feel so strongly has even the tiniest possibility of being correct is itself irrational. A certainty either way on the subject of the existence of a God indicates a closed, not an opened mind, and will eventually bring on stagnation and decay."

"I suppose next you'll tell me that insipid story of the footsteps."

Number One did not react to his stridency in kind, though it was a near thing.

"I do know many who have found great comfort in that small story, Captain. Is their comfort false? Would you deny them that comfort?"

Pike seemed to calm for a moment.

"Do you recall Brecht's Galileo, Number One?"

"Of course. Unhappy Is The Land That Needs A Hero."

"I firmly believe in finding that hero within. If he or she isn't there, then they will not be found in a book, a temple, a bush, a mountain or a manger. But the lines that always stick with me are not those, so much as the part where the little monk begs Galileo to recant on behalf of his own miserable peasant parents, who need to believe that they live at the center of the universe. Well, I say, let illusions be shattered, and let all false comforts fall away. In the end, they are no more real than poor Vina's beauty. They are all connected by way of being a fundamental lie."

She looked at him in a gentle, not a furious, disbelief.

"You would deny harmless comfort to those in need?"

"I'd debate the harmlessness of all that, but no. Of course I wouldn't deny them such comfort, no matter its source. I'm not normally even like this. I have no more use for the atheist who needs to surround himself with like minds than I do for his opposite number among strictly religious folk. Damn it, I enjoy the exchange of ideas. Especially those that challenge me. But all the things that I have ever objected to are now invading my hours of rest. Hell is the worst of it, in more ways than one. The ultimate ostracization technique, for those who don't fit the ideal or the mold."

Number One looked tired. The joy derived from her research seemed lost to the intensity of the conversation with her captain.

"I do not believe in Heaven, Hell, or God. But when my logic-driven mind seeks to dismiss those concepts entirely, I am forced to look back on the two tales of the watchmaker."

"I know the one. A watch is found in the desert, and the question arises, who made it? I'm sorry, Number One. But I put that circular logic just ahead of an Earth that's somehow only millennia old, and the thought that Vulcans and others are just illusions meant to draw Humans away from the 'truth' that our world is the one and only."

"It is more compelling if one allows its permutations to unfold. But another tale of the watchmaker goes back to Einstein. When he fully realized the applications his theories could be used for war–especially atomic weaponry–he was heard to say, 'Better I should have become a watchmaker.' Yet he did not. The dichotomy of this man's prophetic foreknowledge about the awesome implications of his discoveries stands in contrast to the fact that his love of knowledge would not permit him to not use the brain he believed given him by his God."

Christopher Pike knew how to deliver a final strike. He would later wonder if this was all he knew how to do.

"He also once believed, based on the judgments of his revered elders, some of them religious, that he was an idiot when it came to mathematics. Thank you, Number One. Even if it wasn't exactly what I needed, the intensity of this debate was no less than I'd expect of you."

"Captain?"

"Yes?"

"We sentients are bound by several simple facts. Chief among these to me is this."

Her eyes took on a certainty about the value of uncertainty.

"The universe is vast beyond our knowing, and we cannot know all its mysteries. Therefore, the fewer possibilities we exclude by definition, the closer we are to knowing at least most of it. Can you who lead us through all these wonders say categorically their glory has no guiding hand? That perhaps beyond limited imagery and limited ideology lies a mind and a heart that is simply...vaster?"

He left her presence, then. But the impact of her words would stay with him.

----------

He was a leader, and he made a leader's choice. As the soldiers approached, he placed a hand on the one who was obviously furtive.

"No need to speak up. I'll identify myself."

"Forgive Me!" the man cried out.

Pike shook his head.

"You are a character in a story. With no more choice than Cinderella had to get into that coach."

The man went from contrite to offended.

"You would reduce me so? Even I have worth. This is my moment."

"A moment to be marked off as the primal definition of a traitor?"

His second among these men stepped forward.

"Who knows what truly happened? Perhaps it was not a willful, but an accidental betrayal, which became magnified through retellings. There are accounts that have you surviving the trials to come, and being revered and heard merely for doing so. But the story is different. It goes forward as it must for a reason. It is a pillar against which the living lean, in order to feel certain of something."

"So the truth is an irrelevancy? An inconvenience?"

"Not at all. The truth is wondrous, when it can be found and verified. The small details? What matter if you were born with the animals around you, or in the sleeping place of one of their keepers? Or if the port of Caesarea were small or mighty? Or even if that wicked king slaughtered the children of ten thousand strangers, or merely his own in an attempt to avert a palace coup? For he was wicked enough to do either."

Pike wondered why the soldiers were so slow to arrive.

"What about you? Marked off a faithless coward, lying to save your own skin when questioned?"

The second shrugged.

"Yes. He betrays. I cower. That one doubts."

"And I die. That's my role."

"More like a small part of it. Many say only that you died for them. They speak not of how you lived for them."

Pike turned away.

"Whether seeing me as a strict ascetic or joyful revolutionary, it doesn't matter. It's all part of the same pedantic foolishness that caused more wars than I can count. When the Romans come for me, it will be in part because I am an affront to their pantheon of gods, who will be replaced soon enough by a canon of saints and martyrs. Then those who have been persecuted will in turn send people to their deaths for affronts real and imagined. It doesn't end–until we end it, by declaring the sky the sky, inhabited by the birds and only the birds."

He turned back, and the Romans were upon them. The lead soldier shook his head.

"Is that all this place is to you? Do you only see it as a spot where grasping, clutching authorities put down a preachy rebel? Many people swear that the world turned around this one small patch of land. You speak of endless wars, but neglect to mention the endless hope that also began here. But enough. We came here to arrest a leader."

"Then arrest me."

They brought forward a prisoner, a bearded man who looked like he knew exactly what he was doing. The lead soldier pointed at the man.

"He is a leader. He is of his people, and he walks among his people. We take his life, not for some sedition our empire can easily laugh off, but because he is a true leader. As you are not."

Pike looked at the prisoner.

"You could have fled, while they were focused on me."

"My place was among them. Where else would I be but with my people?"

The prisoner was led off. The lead soldier had his men hold Pike as he ran him through.

"He dies with the glory that befits him. You, on the other hand, go to be with Hades."

"I–I don't fear Hell!"

The soldier smiled.

"But you do fear Hades' realm."

The soldier became The Keeper.

"Do you remember, Christopher? Do you remember why you fear the realm of Hades?"

--------

Pike awoke in a room he had briefly considered shutting down when he took command of the Enterprise. He looked around himself in the dark, and finally looked for the power control. The light hurt his eyes as it came up.

"The ship's chapel. I suppose you think this is your place."

He was speaking to no one at all, but he did not care.

"Wrong. This is all my ship. But let's assume you're real, and that you are here."

He was not ready to make such an assumption, even as a hypothetical. But he needed to speak. He needed this more badly than he had needed anything, for a very, very long time.

"Do you honestly think that anyone with a belief system like mine can be prodded into conceding your existence? If you are there, then surely you know of the fable of the sun and the wind. But honestly, I have no quarrel with you. It's the most fervent of your followers. They are a wholly insufferable lot. They, more than any innate skepticism, make it impossible for a rational man to even allow for you. I have a life that I am very proud of, and I'm sorry, I don't see the need to turn it over to anybody. Don't you see? It's not just the idea of a guiding hand behind it all. It's the lesser assumptions that arise from this one grand assumption. The pages of our history run red with the blood drawn by people who said your will was an excuse for anything they felt like doing. If you are there, then how can you allow that? And what about the depredations of the Orions, the savagery of the Klingons, and the Greens and Khans of Terran history? I know your answer to Job. Well, Sir, I respond back with righteous indignation!"

Pike found that, whatever sleep he had gotten in the chapel, it had not been enough. His emotions and his control over them were barely there.

"Where were you? A good miracle or two would have stopped the atomic wars, and The Horror. If that wasn't a moment to make your presence known, then either you just aren't there or you just don't care. Yet I remain a rational man at heart, so I am willing to do what some do. Assign all the whys and why nots to the idea of a grand plan just too big for our intellects. That's not irrational, is it? But I keep my greatest objection to the very notion of a God standing above us all. It's really a very simple one."

He had to get to Phil Boyce. Angry though he might still be, the Doctor could give him something to induce a dreamless sleep. At least for one night. That was all he needed to survive this. Maybe, if he had simply swallowed that pride and asked for it when all this started...No. Like it or not, and he most pointedly did not, this was a place he had to go.

"My objection is this: If we are all your children, when do we grow up and assume responsibility for ourselves? If we haven't outgrown the concept of you, then when do the children become adults? We've left the homeworld. Met other races. But if we still keep turning to and turning all responsibility over to you, then we're not adults. Just rich brats, out on a sabbatical. Able to run home to Daddy every time things don't go right."

Pike now actually looked towards the ceiling.

"It doesn't matter if your holy books contain every last answer. What are your children worth if we never learn those answers for ourselves? You just want to be a good father. Too many of us want to use you as a crutch, a means of never dealing with things ourselves. The only times things have ever gotten better is when we stopped waiting for miracles, and made it happen ourselves. In the end, you aren't the problem. We are."

He made for the door through bleary eyes as he finished talking.

"And that is why I make strident, sweeping statements that can tend to offend. Faith in you is like any other object. The danger lies in how we often use it. As a substitute for thought. As a weapon to bludgeon enemies without, and as a scalpel to cut away perceived enemies within. To–well, if you are there, by definition you know all the rest. To my mind, if God is there, he would never let the worst of us so often manipulate our best highest natures to the lowest and vilest of goals. So I will apologize, not for my belief that I'm a tired fool talking to empty air, but for being so fearful of the ignorance associated with religion that I myself engage in ignorance while defending against it. That is all."

Pike sat down by the door, realizing that making Sickbay was not in him.

"Actually, one last thing. How—howzabout an angel to get me to my Doctor?"

The door opened, and powerful hands aided Pike in standing up.

"Doctor Boyce has instructed me to take you to him, quietly and discreetly, sir. Will you accept my assistance?"

Pike smiled to see Lieutenant Spock. He took in the young officer's Vulcan features.

"He may just have a sense of humor, after all."

"Doctor Boyce, Captain?"

"Him too, Mister Spock. Him too."

* * *

The Keeper was about to begin his speech again, but Pike merely looked up at the shadowed figure.

"Just send me into the lake. I know what's there, now. I also know that I need to go in."

This time, the ground pulled away slowly, like an automated floor, and Pike merely said three more words to The Keeper before jumping in the burning lake.

"Go To Hell."

He dove in, fully braced for the flesh-cooking heat of the surface fire, and the bone-chilling cold of the water below. Because now he understood.

*It's a bizarre form of physics. The heat and fire on the surface comes from all that is being drawn away from this spot. How could I forget why it's so cold down here? Do I mistrust religion so much, that I forgot a stirring work like Dante's journey told of?*

Hell and Heaven had physics, or at least, he reasoned, they could, if they were there. It was an enjoyable speculation, pointless though it seemed. Ahead of him now, the water was completely frozen solid, and he made out the hideous visage of the primary resident of this place.

*Your beauty burned away to nothing as you fell. Now you sit, here, frozen and immobile. In the Greek mythologies, the common people, good and bad, endured this fate. I could never imagine anything worse. Then, when the Christians came, this fate was reserved solely for you. You know what? You deserve it!*

Christopher Pike might simply believe something to be nothing more than a story told to children, but aspects of a story might still bother him, when he saw in his mind that it was poorly written.

*You are mytho-history's greatest and grandest fool. You had it all. Once you, and not Michael were his trusted second. But solely because the world below you wasn't going to fit your narrow vision, you tried to take the top office. You dragged many others down with you, and the misery and bitterness you emanate from here has continued to broadcast out, and every time someone didn't appreciate what they had in our history, they followed your example. You aren't some defiant rebel with your own kingdom. You're just a frustrated office seeker, cut off from what you used to have, and cut off from the ones you took down with you. You are apartness. You are distance. I don't fear all the punishments of this place. I fear only your fate, the fate you engineered for yourself. To be cut, flayed and taunted for your wrongs is nothing. Hell is a life of immobility, living amid the illusion that this will somehow ever change, and the delusion that somehow these lies will lead to a new creation. If this Hell is waiting for me, then I say, grant me oblivion."

He began to wake up, yet just before he did, the ice around the demon king's face frosted into a mirror, and Pike felt fear and loathing as his own face seemed superimposed upon the most unique of the eternally damned.

*This time, I won't forget. I will wipe away the frost that forms that mirror. I hear your warning, and I am grateful for it. I won't let this become me. I will...."

--------------

"Chris?"

Boyce was standing over him, and on his face, the anger of their earlier talk was happily replaced with the concern for a friend.

"Doctor, tell me anything except that I've been out for years."

"Hours. Eight of them. Possibly a first for you in this decade."

Pike sat up, and he did indeed feel refreshed.

"You gave me something?"

"You could have asked me earlier. Not that I'm fond of dream-suppressants. A bit like freezing equatorial waters to stop hurricanes from forming. Just because it can be done, doesn't mean it should."

Pike shook his head.

"I'll only need one for tonight, to get my sleep pattern back on track. I think the dreams are done. I don't remember a lot of it, any more, but I feel like I found what I was looking for, or looking to avoid, in any event. Until my life is over, I guess I'm done with Hell. Then I find out, same as everybody else."

Boyce turned to look at his friend. The concerned look deepened.

"Chris? You sure you're feeling all right?"

Pike nodded.

"Congratulations, Doctor. It's an agnostic."

The doctor sat down by the bio-bed.

"Should it be? Chris, I don't want you making any sort of change based on horrific dreams of an image of Hell that even most believers don't accept any longer. I also don't want you to ever think that you have to change, in order to stay my friend."

Pike shook his hand in the air in front of himself.

"I'm still much more skeptic than not, Phil. But I can no longer stand and proclaim what is not, when I have no more evidence of that than I do of what is, as it concerns such matters as a supreme being. I choose not to embrace religion. I just won't dismiss it any longer. The only certain thing I will do on the subject of religion is apologize to my doctor and my friend. I never meant to offend you."

"Belay that. You know what, Chris? Every person of faith finds at times that it just isn't enough, and its then they really have to feel it. Maybe the inverse is true, as well. Maybe your certainty that there was no 'there' there wasn't enough for you anymore. Maybe you have no use for talk of God. Maybe, though, your mind needed to allow for the possibility of the unseen world. A rational man needs to keep his mind open, after all."

"Thanks, Phil. But I feel like there was another lesson. Something outside of religion. I think I may have lost sight of it."

Boyce helped his captain up, and gave him a small vial of the dream suppressant to take later that day.

"Some of the officers are having a small get-together in the rec area later. Maybe mingling with your crew will shake something loose."

"We'll see, Doctor."

But Pike's mind asserted itself quickly after he left Sickbay. The captain needed to stay above it all. Needed to be at a certain distance from his crew, to avoid familiarity.

Later that evening, Boyce, Number One, and Chief Engineer Mizrahi attempted in vain to teach Mister Spock the game of poker. It would take a later captain to pique his interest in this. As they played, Boyce kept looking to the doors, hoping that he would see his friend, come to be among his crew at last.

The dreams of Christopher Pike stopped being of note for quite some time. The lessons learned above and beneath the lake of fire were to be forgotten.

For a time.

-------------------

2264

The man who was set to take possession of the one object that Christopher Pike actually treasured sat and talked with him. There was no enmity, and their names would stand easily together in a history of at least one hundred and fifty years, as concerned the starships Enterprise.

"It was like something out of H.G. Wells. Kodos' forces were hunting anyone not on the lists right, left and center, and this fellow was praying non-stop, practically begging their audio sensors to pick it up. I was only fifteen, but I swear I considered picking up a rock and at least knocking him unconscious. I finally asked him to keep it to himself."

Pike recalled that Wells' cleric seemed to be a character set to acquiesce, whereas Kirk's companion merely seemed understandable nervous and upset.

"What did he say?"

"Then, I felt foolish. He told me he hadn't realized he was saying all that out loud. Told me he wasn't even particularly religious."

"Atheists and foxholes, eh?"

Kirk moved to finish what seemed an uncomfortable recollection.

"I've never had much use for any of that. My mother is the religious one in our family. My father used to joke that, if he ever encountered an alien species as religious as Mom, he'd be worried about starting a Holy War with them!"

Kirk added one more thing after the light chuckles faded.

"I did decide, while running on Tarsus–and it was mostly running, not junior heroism, despite what some reporters said-that, if anyone were watching over us, I'd have no objections to it. Usually, though, I like to watch my own back."

"I couldn't agree more."

Kirk got up.

"Captain, if you've no objections, I'd like to get out and meet the crew."

"But your new senior staff meets with us in three hours. Commander Mitchell isn't even aboard yet."

"Yes, but that's the senior staff. I want to meet my crew. If there's one thing that I learned from Captain Garrovick, it's that a commanding officer is an organic part of his ship, and his crew. Space can make us apart, distant, from those things that make us Human. So, sir–by your leave?"

Pike was more than a bit thrown. Yet soon the ship and its crew would be in the charge of this brash young man, and it would be run in his fashion.

"Of course."

For there could be only one true captain.

-------------

2265

There was the burning, so like the lake. But there was no cool surface beneath.

There were also voices.

"How did something like this happen? Is there anything left of him?"

"Accidents do happen, even nowadays. He is alive. But the damage is beyond anyone's ability to repair–unless you happen to believe in miracles."

"He went back for all those young people. This is worse than a shame."

"Delta Radiation. Shit. He'd be better off dead. A lot better."

"I look at him, and I wonder if it's even the same man. Commodore Mendez has given the order. Any and all measures, no matter how extraordinary, are to be used in preserving and maintaining Fleet Captain Pike's life. Poor bastard. He'll be lucky if we can set up a relay for him to give basic responses. Because that mess is never moving again."

"Talk right in his ear, why don't you?"

"If that mind is aware of anything but pain right now, I'd be flatly amazed."

In truth, Pike's mind did not catch their unguarded words at this point. It was too busy focusing on a single thought.

*If there is anyone–anyone at all out there, listening....Please don't leave me like this. Kill me instead–but make sure someone is there, with me. I don't want to live–and I don't want to die alone.*

*This Is Hell.*

------------

2266

Pike moved about, freely. He made love with Vina, had high adventure, and knew peace at the core of his soul.

"Keeper?"

"I am here."

"This is all one of your illusions?"

"It is. But you will find it preferable to your current form. The Delta Radiation, along with the damage to Vina, has proven an obstacle to our efforts to ultimately repopulate our shattered world. But we shall overcome this."

"I'm on Talos. How did I get here?"

"The one you call Spock was contacted by us. That you forgot this is understandable. There was some small damage to your brain, when you were so gravely injured."

Pike considered some facts he could recall.

"But travel to Talos is restricted. That could have cost him his career."

"Consider, Captain Pike. You are freed, in a fashion, from the prison of your body, solely because one who held you in the highest affection and regard had not forgotten you, and risked all the scorn of his society to deliver you here. Now, resume the life of your dreams."

"Since the alternative is no alternative, I will. But can you send a message to Spock from me?"

"We will."

"Thank You."

It was all one grand illusion. He was living in a story. But it was not Hell.

* * *

2294

It was not a long prayer, and its brevity took nothing away from its coherence. Spock shared his lost friend's sense that certain things should be purely a matter of self-reliance. Yet where something caused no harm and might even help in an unknown manner, logic called for it to be at least attempted. So Ambassador Spock prayed for the soul of Captain James T. Kirk, and for the soul and life of Captain Christopher Pike, then dwelling on Talos Four.

"My father's people were saved from themselves. Help now those I have held close to me."

It is said that all prayers are answered. Yet in what manner this answer takes place is an eternal source of both conjecture and wonder.

--------

Pike found his breathing shallow. He saw Vina fade away for perhaps the last time. He was outside, in the encampment once used to bait him and his crew. His pain was fiercer than it had been in decades. An image of the Keeper appeared.

"By the time you see this, I, the last of my people, will have succumbed to the final effects of the ruinous war we fought, so long ago. I may no longer provide you the illusion of Vina, who died nearly ten of your years ago. Our pride, which in many ways caused the last war here, also made us overlook how foolish our efforts at repopulation truly were. Forgive us, Christopher Pike. My people had old fables, like yours, of an afterlife and judgment faced for the lives we led. Oddly, I have found myself turning back to those fables as the end approaches, and perhaps hoping that some were not fables at all. Again, please forgive a dying and a desperate race its efforts to outrun fate."

Whether he could ever forgive the Talosians, or for what he should forgive them for, mattered less to Pike than the fact that he was a barely functional man on life support in the middle of a desolate, now-empty planet. No illusions. Just the coldest of cold winds. He would live the end of his days here, and here would he die alone.

Was this just fate, cruel and random? Was it a lesson on believing in what he rationally knew to be a lie? Was it some kind of karmic payback for living his life the way he had? Pike knew none of this for certain. He knew only one thing.

*I am in Hell.*

He felt his essence leave his body. He looked back at his body, wondering if this wasn't one last illusion, provided by a dying brain. Just as suddenly, his essence went back to his body.

"What just happened here?"

That voice. He knew that voice. Strong, young, vibrant. The voice of a leader.

"No. I'm-I'm-I'm–restored?"

Struggle though he might, Pike could not shake off what he knew had to be an illusion. Finally, he accepted that somehow, he had been granted a genuine miracle.

"Thank You! THANK YOU, G—"

"Captain Pike?"

The man standing behind him seemed nervous.

"Captain Pike? I'd like to introduce myself."

The man looked roughly like a younger Christopher Pike, despite several features being off.

"Do I know you?"

"No, sir. My name is Charles Evans. Charlie is what I like to be called."

Pike decided that if this was all the product of a brain shutting down, it was just coherent enough to get his interest.

"Charlie, did you regenerate me?"

"Yes, sir. You don't mind, do you?"

Pike had a feeling Charlie hadn't dealt with a lot of people.

"Not–at all. But how–and why?"

"The how is that I was raised by these beings called Thasians. They gave me these powers, after my ship crashed on their world. I got away as a teenager, but they had to grab me back from Enterprise when I did some horrible things. They still let me out briefly from time to time, so long as I don't hurt anyone."

Definitely not a social monarch butterfly.

"And the why?"

"Well, I kind of keep watch over the people on Enterprise. I can't do much without the Thasians throwing a fit. About the most I ever accomplished involved keeping this woman who stole Captain Kirk's body from firing a phaser to make the theft permanent and this other time when Captain Kirk was climbing a mountain, and he lost his grip, and I slowed his descent by five percent...."

"Charlie? Why me?"

Pike had a feeling this young man was going to be what was called a talker.

"Oh. Well, shortly after Captain Kirk was lost during the launch of the Enterprise-B..."

"Jim Kirk is dead?"

Charlie nodded.

"The Thasians even let me try and bring him back. But there was something weird about how it happened. I saw that everyone was so miserable–I was too. He tried to be nice to me, despite all I did. Anyway, Ambassador Spock....he's an Ambassador, now...."

"Yes. I-I picked that up."

"Good. Well, he starts praying for you. I could tell he didn't do it very often, and that what had happened to you really hurt him. So, I spoke to the Thasians, and they said since you had been removed from the 'circle of events', it would be alright to rescue you."

Pike felt a bit put off by this explanation.

"Just how many of these supposedly godlike beings are there in the cosmos? The Keeper allowed me to experience some of Jim Kirk's adventures as though they were my own. The galaxy seems replete with beings like your Thasians."

Charlie Evans had an answer.

"From what I've learned, many millennia ago, one species evolved so far that they created their own space-time continuum to occupy. This set off kind of an evolutionary race among the then dominant sentients. Some blew themselves up after reaching a certain level, or like the Talosians, while trying to achieve that level. Some, like the Organians or the Thasians, pulled back and withdrew from the galaxy, fearing that they might end up doing the same. Try and understand, the Thasians mean well. But they can be kind of cold without meaning to. And they are strict."

"I'm sorry that you have to go back, Charlie."

Evans looked down, then met Pike's gaze.

"You don't understand, sir. When the Thasians remade me, it wasn't just to help me survive. It was because that was what they knew. And when I remade you, I really only had me as a template for the mix between Human and Thasian. So you have to go back, too. I'm sorry. We'll have each other to talk to. But Thasus can be like a kind of–well, a kind of Hell."

Charlie could not possibly understand that, to Pike, this was still so far above what he had known, no words could describe it. *God Bless You, Spock. You never forgot me. Your prayer rescued me from Hell.*

"There are supposedly circles of Hell, Mister Evans. To my mind, I've just traded up. You say the Thasians let you out on occasion? Well, maybe we can go out in the cosmos together. Maybe if I can convince them of my good character, they'll let me guide you. So I have powers now, like yours and theirs?"

"Yeah. Just be careful how you use them. And don't turn any girls into monitor lizards. They hate that."

"I'll keep that in mind. Now, let me do a few things before we leave."

Among Kirk's adventures he had relived as his own was the early loss of Gary Mitchell. Even with the threat of Thasian intervention, Pike feared stepping over the line as he felt his new abilities.

"First, let's de-radiate this poor ruined world."

Pike remembered the pillar of mental strength and knowledge who had been his first officer, and in that memory found it easy to cleanse the world of the toxic remnants of it's long-ago wars.

"Second, let's generate some cumulo-nimbus. I think 97% cloud cover should do it."

He saw his CMO, his friend, smile at his captain being so involved with something so vital and new.

"Finally–the seeds of life. It may take millions of years. But I will fulfill the reason I was brought here. Talos will live again."

Charlie Evans looked out at the new, emerging creation.

"I feel like a fool. Nothing I do ever goes this well."

Christopher Pike prepared to transit to his new home on Thasus.

"Do you like games, Charlie? I could teach you poker."

"Poker's fine, sir. Any game is fine with me–except chess."

He was free from his prison of a body, and he was free of the well-meaning illusions of the Keeper. Ironically, he was now 'stuck' as a being of immense power mostly confined to one world with only one socially awkward young man as his companion. Pike muttered as the pair faded from Talos.

"You really do have a sense of humor, don't you?"


End file.
